Community Health Volunteer leads the way in removing HIV/AIDS related stigma and discrimination
Rajwant Kaur belongs to the village of Mirpur, Dist. Amritsar in Punjab. She is a dedicated Community Health Volunteer (CHV) with the North West Frontier Regional Board of Health Services of the CNI- SBHS.

It was about 5 years back when Rajwant Kaur watched a film on HIV/AIDS that she found the symptoms shown there to be similar to that of her brother in law Satnam who was ill for some time.

Her brother in law Satnam had been working as a taxi driver in Baroda. His wife Paramjit and their 3 children lived with him in Baroda.

Paramjit became ill with fever and diarrhea and started loosing a lot of weight. Satnam also was loosing weight and became very weak. They returned to their village Mirpur and Rajwant Kaur was shocked to see the state they were in and took them to the doctor. The medications did not help and the Doctor advised a very expensive blood test. The doctor was not willing to give the results and after a lot of persuasion said that the result indicated that Paramjit was HIV positive. She died soon after.

Rajwant Kaur took the bold step of taking her brother in law who was also HIV positive and his 3 daughters to her house and cared for him till he died.

Rajwant Kaur adopted all the 3 children and now has a family of five, including her 2 children.
 
SBHS Community Health Programme Vermiculture breaks down the caste barrier.
(A story from Punjab an additional benefit of the IGP)
Vermiculture was introduced in the villages as part of the SBHS Community Health Programme ‘Income Generation Scheme’ in February 2004.

Traditionally the upper castes in this part of Punjab do not touch buffalo dung and handling of anything considered ‘dirty’ is always done by the lower castes.

Seeing the viability and profitability, women of all castes have joined hands in handling dung for Vermiculture compost.

Caste barriers came down between people of all the five groups.